


Bound to You

by chiiyo86



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Forced Intimacy, Handcuffed Together, Humor, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 12:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9323774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: Lance's hatred of nature gets justified when he finds himself bound to Keith with a sentient vine. Just a day in the lives of the Voltron paladins.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [interabang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/interabang/gifts).



> My first time writing Keith/Lance and Voltron fic in general, so I really, really hope you will enjoy this silly fic. My thanks to [htbthomas](http://archiveofourown.org/users/htbthomas/) for the beta work!

It wasn’t that Lance didn’t like nature. No, it would be rather more accurate to say that he hated, that he despised, that he _loathed_ nature. All this teeming life made him wary—it was only a matter of statistics that at least some of it wanted to hurt them. 

So he hadn’t been enjoying their trip in the jungle very much. They’d been following some flimsy intel on a Galra secret lab that was supposed be hiding in the heart of the forest, but either it was really well hidden or it was simply not there, because they’d been walking all day and had found no trace of it. Lance had spent his time pointing his bayard at every hint of movement, at the slightest rustle in the trees or the bushes. It was all too green: the wild grass that went up to their waists at some points, the creeping vines, the towering trees that buzzed with the cries of birds and varied unidentified creatures. Lance trusted none of it.

“You’re ridiculous,” Keith told him just as Lance whirled around, chasing a shadow he’d seen scuttle through the grass. “Nothing here is going to hurt you.”

“Nothing is going to hurt me? _Nothing_ is going to hurt me?” Bewilderment made Lance forget his careful search for a moment and his weapon tipped down. “Since all of this started I’ve been chased by aliens, shot at, almost ejected into space. So I think I’ve earned the right to be a little careful, okay?”

Keith shrugged, and blew irritably at a strand of hair tickling his eyes. Stupid Keith, Lance thought ferociously. He probably _liked_ nature.

They had to camp out for the night, and Lance made no mystery of how little he agreed with this course of action. Hunk, who could usually be relied on to be scared about something, was surprisingly into this camping nonsense, whereas Pidge sided with Lance. 

“I hate the outdoors,” she said with fervor, but when Lance held out his hand for a high five she just gave him a look.

Shiro had probably been a freaking boy scout before he became a pilot, and he made them a fire in no time. As for Keith, he looked at home in the forest the way he did everywhere else, as though the world molded itself to properly fit him. 

Lance didn’t think he’d manage to fall asleep in enemy territory, but traipsing around the jungle had apparently tired him enough that he was dead to the world before he could count to ten. When he woke up it was as dark as the inside of an oven, except for what remained of the fire, and Lance felt a pressing urge to piss. He rolled out of his sleeping bag, head still heavy from sleep. The night was dark, but it wasn’t silent at all. Insects screeching, birds chirping, and wait, was that a howl? Lance froze for a moment, halted in the process of standing up. He held his breath. 

“Guys?” he called in a low voice, but none of the others even stirred.

Nature’s call—ha!—was too insistent, though, so he hauled himself to his feet and walked up to the edge of the clearing where they’d set up camp. He hesitated then, looking back to the sleeping forms of his companions. He was tempted to relieve himself right here, but Pidge murmured something in her sleep and Lance felt himself flush. It didn’t change much that Pidge was a girl—most of the time he didn’t think about it—but he still didn’t want her to wake up and catch him with his junk out. Slowly, carefully, he made his way between the bushes fringing the clearing. He made sure that he could still see the glowing embers of their camp fire behind him before he unzipped his pants. 

The pressure lessening as he peed was the only thing on his mind for a few blessed seconds. He let out a deep sigh, closing his eyes briefly, but when he opened them he caught sight of something moving to his right.

“I’m not good to eat, I’m not good to eat,” he chanted under his breath, tucking himself in and scrutinizing the darkness at the same time. The plants around him formed a palette of shadows dancing lightly to the wind—or at least he hoped it was only the wind. “I taste very bad,” he tried again. 

Something brushed the back of his neck and he yelped, spinning around, hands slashing through the air in defense. His hands met nothing solid, and no creatures stood at his back. Was he still half-asleep? Had it been a hallucination of some kind?

He felt something touch his cheek and he yelled, “Stay away from me!”

He’d left his weapon next to his sleeping bag like a freaking rookie. He started to stumble back in direction of the camp, craning his neck so he could try to see everywhere at the same time.

“Lance?” It was Keith, sounding alert and worried. “Lance, are you okay?”

“Right here!” Lance called. “There’s something—”

His voice caught when he felt something rough and cool slither down the hollow of his throat. Something like a finger. Or, no, it was too long to be a finger—it felt like a _tentacle_.

“Lance!” From the thrashing sounds Lance could hear it seemed like Keith was cutting his way through the vegetation, and his voice was getting closer. “Lance, talk to me!”

“I—something’s touching me,” Lance squeaked out, “but I can’t—I can’t see—”

“What’s going on?” Shiro’s voice, this time, followed closely by sleepy mumbling from Hunk and Pidge.

“Lance!” Keith was a dark silhouette against the red glow from the fire. “What the hell is that thing?”

“I don’t know!” He could feel whatever _that_ was slowly make its way down his shirt, tickling the skin above his bellybutton. “Kill it, please, kill it.”

“It looks like a vine,” Keith said, sounding more perplexed than horrified.

“Oh god, Keith, can you play the botanist later, _please_?”

“Don’t move.” 

Lance squeezed his eyes shut as Keith was raising his sword arm, but then he felt something whip at his chin and heard Keith cry out. When he opened his eyes again he saw that the vine—for lack of a better word—was wrapped around Keith’s right wrist and was dragging him through the bushes.

“Hey, let him go, you creepy piece of rope!” Lance shouted before he launched himself at the thing and tried to pull it off Keith. 

The vine-thing twisted to snake around Lance’s forearm so that it was flushed against Keith’s arm. Keith couldn’t use his sword, and the more they both tugged at the vine, the tighter it wound around them. 

“Keith! Lance!”

The others’ calls echoed through the forest. They were coming too, and Lance heard Hunk exclaim, “Oh my god! Is the forest attacking us? Is that it? Have we angered the forest?”

“Don’t get too close!” Keith warned. “I tried to hack free but it didn’t seem to like it too much.”

“Get your heads down,” Shiro ordered, and Lance tucked his chin against his chest, closing his eyes one more time. He felt heat and smelled something like green wood burning. It didn’t feel like anything was pulling at him anymore; when he checked he saw that a piece of vine was twisting helplessly on the ground, but that his arm was still attached to Keith’s.

“Let’s get back to the camp,” Shiro said, his hand heavy against the back of Lance’s neck.

Back at the camp Shiro rekindled the fire so he could use its light to examine Lance and Keith’s arms. A dark, green-smelling fluid oozed from the end of the vine that had been cut by Shiro, but the rest was still wound up tight around Keith’s wrist and Lance’s forearm. The skin around it was an angry red; Lance’s whole forearm burned uncomfortably, almost to the point of pain, but Keith didn’t show any sign that he felt the same.

“Does it hurt?” Hunk asked anxiously. “Are you two okay?”

“Do you think anything else is going to attack us?” Pidge asked, her eyes darting around. She still had her bayard out and its greenish glow made her look sick. 

“I don’t know,” Shiro said. “Allura didn’t say there was anything dangerous here.” 

He poked at the vine, trying to slip a finger under it to pull it off, but it was coiled so tight that it almost looked like it was fused to their skins. Lance swallowed back a surge of unease at the thought. Was it what people meant when they said they were trying to be one with nature? Because he was _not_ very keen on that. 

“I don’t dare try to cut it with what we have here,” Shiro said. “I could hurt you. Better wait until we’re back at the castle.”

“What about the Galra lab?” Keith asked. 

Lance rolled his eyes. “Who cares about that stupid lab at this point? We were attacked by _nature._ ” He jabbed a finger from his unbound hand into Keith’s side. “I told you something like that would happen. Didn’t I tell you?”

“Hey, you’re the one who walked away from the camp at night! What were you doing, by the way?”

“A man has needs, okay?”

“Oh, please,” Pidge groaned. “Tell me you weren’t—”

“What? No! I was just taking a piss!”

“Then _say_ it instead of—”

“Guys,” Shiro said in that low, authoritative tone of his that Lance couldn’t help responding to. He shut up, and so did Pidge. “It’ll be dawn in an hour or so. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I can get back to sleep, so I suggest we start packing and then head back as soon as we have some daylight.”

This was something they all agreed on. Lance could only pray whatever deity listening that Allura would have some kind of Altean technology handy.

\---

“Interesting,” was Allura’s assessment once they were back at the castle. “I thought those had gone extinct ten thousands years ago.” She turned to Coran. “Do you think the species could have been revived?”

“So, is it a plant or is it an animal?” Pidge asked, scrunching her nose as she examined the green vine-looking rope bounding Lance and Keith’s arms. “Because it looked like a plant, but it was sure moving around.”

“It’s a plant,” Coran said. “It’s called a _slim_. It is sentient, but it only has the most basic consciousness.”

“Wait, was it going to eat them?” Hunk asked, eyes going wide with horror.

Lance’s stomach did a little jump at the idea, and he looked down at the piece of vine with apprehension. They were in what Allura had called the medical wing—Lance hadn’t known they had one of those, besides the healing pods. Like their bedrooms, the medical wing was unfurnished and almost featureless, except for a bunk bed on which Keith and he were sitting. Because Keith’s wrist was tied to Lance’s forearm he was holding Lance’s arm half in his lap to make up for the dissymmetry. He was frowning slightly, looking more annoyed than worried at the situation. Unless annoyance was Keith’s way of being worried, which was all too possible. 

“Oh, probably not,” Coran said airily. “The _slim_ is more playful than dangerous, really.” He looked at Keith and his eyes narrowed to a slit. “Unless it’s attacked.”

When Keith bristled, Lance could feel the resulting tension echo through his own body. “Hey now,” Keith protested. “How was I supposed to know that? I woke up and I heard Lance scream, and then I saw this thing trying to—”

Unexpectedly he flushed and snapped his mouth shut, and the reaction puzzled Lance until he remembered what exactly the plant had been doing when Keith had showed up. Had it been about to _molest_ him? If that was Coran’s idea of playful, then Lance was very much unamused. 

“Not that all of this isn’t super interesting,” he said cuttingly, “but what I want to know is how you plan to help us get rid of this.”

He lifted his bound arm and waved it, earning himself a hiss of irritation from Keith, who yanked both their arms to his chest.

“Hey!” Lance cried out as he was jolted by the movement.

“Don’t use _my_ arm like it’s yours too! Just leave it there, okay?”

“Maybe my arm doesn’t want to be so close to your—”

“Boys,” Shiro cut them off. “Calm down, we’re going to get you rid of this in no time. Right, Allura? Coran?”

“Well,” Coran said, caressing his moustache thoughtfully, “the problem is that, as I just said, the _slim_ doesn’t react well to being attacked. Every attempt to pull at it or to try and cut it will only make the plant contract further.”

“Ah,” Shiro said. He crossed his arms over his chest, and the gesture struck Lance as an attempt to hide his worry. Bad sign all around. “What can we do, then?”

“The fastest way to solve the problems would be to amputate both arms—”

“What?!”

“Are you fucking _serious_?”

“I was afraid you might not like the sound of that particular solution,” Coran said with perfect equanimity. 

“Coran,” Allura chided him, but she had a hand over her mouth and it looked like she was trying to cover a giggle. Altean sense of humor was seriously messed up. “Don’t try to scare them.”

Shiro had gone very pale at the mention of amputation, and he spoke before Lance had the time to do it, “So there’s another solution, right?”

“Of course,” Allura said, her soothing tone doing wonders for Lance’s blood pressure. “We need to kill the _slim_ before we can pull it off. If we slather the plant every couple of hours with citric acid it’ll wither and die within 15 to 20 hours. We’ll just have to yank off the dead parts, and Keith and Lance will be none the worse for the wear.”

“Alright. That sounds good.”

Fifteen to twenty hours sounded like an eternity to Lance. His arm ached from the bind and itched terribly, but it wasn’t even his main issue. It was just— _weird_ to be so close to someone else all the time. They had to sit pressed against each other shoulder to knee, and Lance’s entire left side was warm from Keith’s body heat. He could feel Keith’s pulse vibrate through his wrist, and Keith’s stupid hair tickled his cheek when he turned his head. He didn’t find the guy as irritating as he had during their days at the Galaxy Garrison, but it was just too much Keith for him to handle. It made him want to—do something drastic.

“Don’t you have anything more aggressive than citric acid?” he asked. “Something that would kill it faster. I’d really like to have my arm back.”

“I do have more toxic solutions, but they’re likely to poison you and Keith too.” Allura tilted her head, giving him a pointed look. “It’s up to you.”

“Uhh, no thanks, I’ll pass. Do you have any painkillers?”

“It hurts?” Allura looked from Lance to Keith, and to Lance’s surprise Keith nodded too. Allura frowned. “I hope it isn’t bound too tightly. We shouldn’t touch it anymore than necessary, or it’ll just get tighter.”

“It kind of itches too,” Lance said. “Is that normal?” 

“I seem to remember that the _slim_ secretes a mildly irritating substance. You shouldn’t get anything more serious than a mild rash, but I’ll give you a balm for it.”

Keith and Lance were given a bottle of citric acid and told to smear it every 2-3 hours on the plant, and a balm that smelled like seaweed, but whose soothing effect was almost immediate. Shiro, Allura and Coran retired to converse together on some war strategy or other, while Hunk and Pidge stirred Lance and Keith to another room for a game of cards. Lance could see that their friends were trying to distract them and was grateful for it. What else could he and Keith do to pass the time, anyway? They couldn’t go on a mission or train like this—even walking around required a bit of negotiation as they decided at what pace they should walk and how to avoid bumping into each other. 

“You know,” Pidge said, looking at them over her cards with an amused smile, “this kind of reminds me of when Allura shackled us together as a ‘bonding exercise.’” She actually put her cards down on the table to make air quotes around ‘bonding exercise'. “Maybe this will do you two some good.”

“We had that food fight!” Hunk said. “That was fun, though. We totally kicked Allura and Coran’s asses that day.”

“Yeah, but it was only for an hour or so,” Lance said. “Not fifteen to _twenty_ hours.”

Keith shot him a glance. “Somehow, I think you’ll survive.”

“Don’t try to sneak a look at my hand!”

They were sitting as far from each other as possible, their bound arms resting between them on the table. It would be difficult for Keith to see Lance’s cards from that angle, but Lance felt tired and irritable and needling Keith was a sure way to unwind. 

Unfortunately for him, Keith didn’t take the bait. “Hunk, it’s your turn,” he said.

Lance wouldn’t stand for being ignored. “I’m talking to you, shithead!” he said, and pulled at Keith’s arm hard enough to almost make him topple.

Keith caught himself, then smacked his cards face down over the table and turned to Lance, glowering. “What the hell do you want? You think I’m happy with this situation? Do you want to fight, is that it?”

“Hey, come on, guys,” Hunk said, rising from his seat. 

Pidge tugged at his sleeve to make him sit back down. “Let them get it out of their systems,” she said. 

Lance kicked back his chair and stood up, forcing Keith to do the same. Lance tried to throw a punch but Keith blocked him easily enough, and then hooked a foot behind Lance’s ankle, sending both of them tumbling down. They rolled on the floor, pulling at each other’s hair and clothes, each of them trying to pin the other down. Lance could hear Hunk and Pidge’s voices floating above them, but couldn’t understand what they were saying because his world had narrowed down to Keith only: Keith’s hair flying in his face, his hard elbows and knees trying to get a hit on him, the muscles in his arms and chest, feeling like concrete when Lance tried to push back against them, the smell of his sweat in his nose. Lance ended on his back, panting for breath, with Keith hovering over him, knees framing Lance’s hips and his unbound hand planted on Lance’s shoulder. Keith’s flushed face was filling the entirety of Lance’s vision field, close enough to him that he could feel little puffs of warmth from Keith’s harsh breathing.

No one spoke for a long moment. Lance’s heart pounded hard against his ribs.

“Guys?” Hunk said at last. “Any broken bones? Should I call Shiro?”

“Do you two need a room?” Pidge asked snidely. 

That made Lance and Keith jump as one man, and they scrambled to their feet with difficulty, tripping over each other in their haste. Lance felt jittery, like that one time he’d overdosed on caffeine, and he couldn’t look in Keith’s direction at all. Pidge and Hunk were staring at them.

“You know what?” Hunk said. “We should go watch a movie. Alteans must have movies, right?”

Everyone mumbled their approval. 

\---

They eventually found what probably passed for the castle’s film library. The movies were in some form of immersive 3D, which was cool and fascinated Pidge to no end, but Altean sense of plot seemed to be pretty much non-existent, and the experience was more akin to a psychedelic trip than to movie watching. It had at least the advantage of distracting Lance from his current predicament. But when the time came to go to bed, tensions flared up again. 

“So, where are you going to sleep?” Pidge asked, stifling a yawn. 

“What do you mean?” Lance said. “I’m going to sleep in my bed, of course.”

“In _your_ bed?” Keith said, eyes narrowed. “Why would we sleep in your bed?”

 _What’s that ‘we’—oh._ It hadn’t occurred yet to Lance that he and Keith couldn’t sleep in their respective rooms. They were going to have to share, and they were going to have to choose which room they went to. Lance certainly wasn’t about to back down on this issue.

“My room is better,” he said. “We’ll sleep there and that’s it.”

“All the rooms are the same!”

“If all the rooms are the same, then why do you care if we sleep in my room or in yours?”

“I don’t know, why do _you_ care? Besides, it’s your fault if we’re like this.”

“ _My_ fault?” Lance pressed a hand against his heart to mark his indignation. “Coran said that the _slim_ only reacts badly if attacked. _I_ didn’t attack it!”

“You told me, ‘kill it, please’! What was I supposed to do?”

The automatic doors hissed as they slid open, signaling Shiro’s entrance. He took one look at them and sighed. “What’s wrong now?” he asked wearily. 

“They’re fighting to know what room they’ll sleep in tonight,” Pidge told him.

“I see.” Shiro’s hand disappeared inside his pants’ pocket and came back with a coin. “Head, you’ll sleep in Keith’s room; tail, you’ll be in Lance’s.” Quick as a magician doing a trick he threw the coin in the air, caught it, and slapped it on the back of his left hand. He looked at it and said, “You’ll sleep in Lance’s room.”

Lance whooped in triumph. He felt a rush of satisfaction when he saw Keith clench his jaw, but Keith merely nodded in agreement and didn’t argue the decision, probably because it had come from Shiro. Lance was oddly disappointed that their argument had been so efficiently nipped in the bud. 

Neither Lance nor Keith spoke as they made their way to Lance’s room. Lance didn’t want to taunt Keith about losing the room argument anymore; the day’s events were suddenly catching up with him, and the only thing he wanted to do was curl up in his bed and sleep. But even that was going to be complicated, and it made him exhausted just to think about it.

Keith examined Lance’s room as though it was unknown territory, even if it probably looked identical to his own. The only personal touch Lance had brought to it was to stick the few pictures of his family he’d had in his wallet over his bed.

Keith looked at the photos and said, “They look nice.”

“Yeah,” Lance said, doing his best not to follow his look. When he was too tired, the sight of his family’s happy smiling faces just made him want to cry, and he couldn’t do that in front of Keith. “Do you have pictures of your family?”

Keith’s face shuttered. “I don’t have any family.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

So much for small talk. Lance started to absent-mindedly shrug off his jacket, until he realized he wouldn’t be able to take off his jacket _or_ his shirt with one of his arms bound to someone else. Keith had obviously come to the same conclusion and they looked at each other for a long awkward moment.

“I’m still taking off my pants,” Lance warned, fumbling with his zipper. 

“What are you doing? I don’t—”

“Keep your hat on, Keith. I won’t take off my underwear, but I’m not sleeping with pants.”

Keith kept all his clothes on, and he averted his eyes while Lance was undressing. Who would have thought that he was such a prude? The bed was too narrow for them to lie on their backs, and they bickered some more to decide on a comfortable position that didn’t twist their arms too much. 

“Move your legs! Your feet are cold!”

“Move your _arm_ —that way, no, ow, ow, my arm can’t twist like that!”

Eventually they settled back-to-back, their bound arms pulled back uncomfortably between each other. Not the best position, but any of the others they’d tried felt way too intimate. There was no space between them, but at least Lance could breathe and not have his nose full of Keith. 

“G’night, Keith,” he said as an olive branch.

For a moment, he thought Keith wasn’t going to respond. “Good night,” he eventually said, his voice an octave lower than usual. 

Despite his exhaustion Lance slept in fits, waking up every time he was too hot or needed to shift positions. He would admit to sometimes being a fussy sleeper. He liked to sleep with his headphones on and he enjoyed his space. He had none of this tonight and his broken sleep was pissing him off. Waking up for what felt like the tenth time, Lance sighed loudly to the silent room. He’d moved in his sleep and was now facing Keith’s back, both of their arms stuck between their bodies. Keith hadn’t moved an inch since they’d settled for the night, and he breathed so quietly that Lance wasn’t sure whether or not he was sleeping.

Keith had a broad back, Lance’s idiotic mind noted. His arm ached and he felt wide awake this time; there was nothing for him to do but to contemplate Keith’s back. He was tempted to poke at it until he woke up Keith, but decided it was too much of a jerk move. Still, it felt singularly lonely to be awake in bed with someone asleep at your side. But then Keith’s shoulder had a spasm, and Keith let out a pained hiss.

“Keith?” Lance whispered. “You awake?”

Keith sighed. “Yeah.”

“What’s wrong?”

“You know you don’t have to whisper, right? There’s no one but us in the room.” Keith paused. “My shoulder is cramping from the position. It’s fine”

Lance’s hand moved without any instruction from his brain and he found himself reaching for Keith’s shoulder. He dug his thumb in the muscle joining Keith’s shoulder and neck, and started to draw slow, deep circles there. Keith’s breathing hitched but he didn’t raise any objection.

“I have a cousin who’s great at massages,” Lance told him, omitting to say that his own massages had never been that well received. 

“Thanks. It’s—it’s good.”

“You should turn around. It’ll be easier on your shoulder.”

Keith turned to face him and Lance immediately regretted his suggestion. They were barely a few inches from each other, their bound arms cradled between them. They were so, _so_ close—close enough to kiss. Lance didn’t have nearly as much experience with girls as he hoped the others assumed, but he’d kissed girls before. Okay, he’d kissed a girl once. He didn’t remember her being so close to him. 

“Is something wrong?” Keith asked. This time he was the one whispering.

“N-no. Eveything is fine. Can’t sleep, that’s all.”

Lance’s face felt sunburned. His own heartbeats deafened him. Keith’s fingers were tickling the sensitive skin inside his wrist.

“Can’t sleep either,” Keith said, still speaking very low. “What should we do?”

The permanent glow in the room allowed Lance to see Keith’s face, half-bathed in the shadows cast by Lance’s body. He had stupidly long eyelashes. He had a mouth that—Lance swallowed hard. Without pausing for thought, he inched closer to Keith and pressed their mouths together. 

His heart did a painful somersault in his chest. _What am I doing, what am I doing. This is Keith!_ He expected Keith to shove him back, punch his face, something. Keith didn’t do any of this. Instead he used his free hand to grab the back of Lance’s head and draw him closer, deeper. Lance nudged a knee between Keith’s legs, who parted them willingly, and then Lance could feel him hard through his pants. Damn, _he_ was hard too. _Oh, god, this is_ Keith. 

Keith let go of his mouth to bury his face in the crook of Lance’s neck, muffling a moan. His hips moved as he started rutting against Lance’s thigh and Lance bit his tongue, the sensation of Keith’s clothed hard-on against his bare thigh too much for him to handle. His own dick, trapped between their moving bodies, was only receiving unsatisfying friction, and there wasn’t quite enough space between them for Lance to get a hand on himself. He grabbed Keith’s elbow to try to draw him closer and feel more. He wanted more, and he thought the want might drive him crazy.

“K—Keith,” he said, and regretted speaking when his voice broke like it had when he still was in his early teens.

He managed to find a way to rub his dick against Keith’s hip and he closed his eyes in bliss. Keith’s breath was hot against the side of his face. Lance felt a clumsy kiss against the apple of his cheek, and then lips brushing the lobe of ear, the hint of a tongue. Suddenly he was coming, white-hot pleasure spiking through his body. Keith gasped, his fingers gripping the back Lance’s neck tightly. Lance leaned boneless against Keith, who breathed like he’d run a marathon but felt reassuringly solid. They let a few minutes pass, until the afterglow started to dissipate and they realized what had just happened. 

“Ah, uh,” Lance said, trying to sluggishly untangle from Keith’s limbs. “I have tissues, if you want, um.”

“Yeah, that would be—good. Great. Thank you.”

They cleaned up quickly and without looking at each other. Nevertheless, Lance was able to go back to sleep without problem, and he didn’t wake up again before morning.

\---

The next day the _slim_ had turned gray and brittle, dead, and they were able to flake it off their skins. Both of their arms were bruised from the adventure, but the relief from having his limb back was so strong that Lance didn’t even think to complain. 

“It’s kind of sad,” Hunk said, poking at the crumbled bits of the dead _slim._

“What do you mean?” Keith asked. 

“Well, it was a living creature, and we killed it. I don’t know, it’s sad.”

“We had to kill it because it wouldn’t let go of us,” Lance pointed out. “If you like it so much, you’re welcome to seek it out the next time we’re in the jungle. Me, I’m _done_.”

“The important part is that you’re both okay,” Shiro said. He looked like a weight had been taken off his shoulders.

“We’re fine,” Keith said, smiling at him.

“I’m surprised you didn’t kill each other, to be honest,” Pidge said. “I was sure one of you wasn’t going to survive the night. How did you manage to share a bed without bloodshed?”

Lance was very deliberately not looking at Keith, and he was pretty sure Keith was doing the same. “We just ignored each other,” he said, and thought he did a good job at sounding nonchalant. 

“The two of you? Ignore each other?” Pidge snorted a laugh. “Yeah, that’s a really suspicious answer.”

Lance felt his cheeks heat up and he saw Keith’s face turn red too. Pidge started cackling, while Hunk looked at her, and then at Lance and Keith in puzzlement. 

“What? What is it?” Hunk asked. “I feel like I missed something.”

“Okay, guys,” Shiro barked loud enough to cover the sound of Pidge’s laughter. “Play time is over, we need to get back to training!”

“Yes, sir!”

As they all strolled down to the training deck Lance dared sneak a glance at Keith, and caught the hint of a smile aimed at him.

 _Maybe nature has some good sides too_ , he thought. He sauntered the rest of the way, feeling on top of the world.


End file.
